There was no dispute Tuesday that Sandra Jacobson was drunk on Jan. 28, 2009 — the day her pickup and a taxi van collided, sparking a wreck that killed two Connecticut librarians.

But on the first day of testimony in her vehicular-homicide trial, jurors were asked to consider a version of events in which she was sober at the time of the 10:30 a.m. collision, downed a mixture of banana schnapps and Vitamin Water a short time later, and lied to several officers when she claimed she had consumed only cold medicine.

In both opening statements and in testimony, Charles Elliott, Jacobson’s lead defense attorney, raised for the first time publicly the question of when she consumed alcohol.

Was it before the crash, as prosecutors alleged, or in the 28-minute window between the accident and the time a Denver police officer first had contact with her, as Elliott asserted?

Jacobson, 41, faces two counts of vehicular homicide and four other charges in the wake of the crash, which left Kate McClelland, 71, and Kathleen Krasniewicz, 54, dead. The two children’s librarians, who were in Denver for a conference, were on their way to Denver International Airport for their flight home when their van and a Ford pickup driven by Jacobson made contact on Peña Boulevard.

Prosecutors alleged Jacobson was driving more than 80 mph, lost control of the pickup, veered into the lane next to her, and sideswiped the van, which skidded off the road and rolled over, ejecting McClelland and Krasniewicz.

Jacobson drove on to the airport, followed by a witness who later pointed out her truck to a police officer.

Christine Washburn, a chief deputy district attorney in Denver, asserted in her opening statement that blood-alcohol tests taken hours after the crash provided evidence that Jacobson was intoxicated at the time of the crash, a wreck that killed “two extraordinary women.”

“Their lives were taken from them on that day by a drunk driver — by a drunk driver at 10:30 in the morning who was over five times the legal limit,” Washburn said, turning toward Jacobson, who sat at the defense table taking notes on a legal pad.

Elliott, however, countered that Jacobson was sober as she drove to the airport, that the cab driver was actually at fault and that Jacobson did not know she’d been in an accident. He asserted that his client had downed a schnapps-laced Vitamin Water after arriving at DIA.

“That road bomb, the road pop, is what brings us here and what we have to deal with,” he said.

Once testimony began, jurors heard an at-times confusing account of the accident.

The cab driver, Nejmudean Abdusalam, an Ethiopian immigrant, said repeatedly through an interpreter that he did not remember key details of the crash and could not explain early statements to police that the pickup had hit the right side of his truck.

Denver police Sgt. Brian Conover acknowledged that there was no way to pinpoint exactly where the two vehicles were when they collided.

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